Dan Gheesling kept his balance on a biplane and now he has posturing rights.

The 25-year-old Catholic school teacher from Dearborn, Mich., was named the winner of Big Brother 10, which was heralded as a "back to basics" edition of the aging CBS reality series, with live audiences sitting in on weekly eviction shows for the first time since season one and all 13 HouseGuests starting off the summer as strangers.

After 71 days of physical challenges, brainteasers, fence-mending and the usual dose of strategic trickery (all accomplished, seemingly, while either sitting down or reclining), Dan beat out mixologist and fellow Renegade Memphis Garrett, 25, for the $500,000 jackpot.

After spending a week as America's Player earlier this season, Dan swept the jury vote, 7-0.

Memphis gets $50,000 for his efforts, while 30-year-old Keesha Smith will pocket $25,000 as the winner of the Favorite Juror Prize.

Gheesling, 25, a biology and physical education teacher at Orchard Lake St. Mary's Prepatory, won the 10-week CBS reality series by a unanimous vote of 7-0, based on votes from a jury of ousted house guests. Runner-up Robert "Memphis" Garrett, a Los Angeles "mixologist" (don't you dare call him a bartender!)and the partner with whom Gheesling rode a secret alliance all the way to the finals, was awarded a purse of $50,000, while a special consolation prize of $25,000 was handed to Keesha Smith, a Hooters waitress and fan favorite from Burbank, Calif.

But Tuesday night was really all about Gheesling, who is also the assistant coach of the varsity football team at Orchard Lake St. Mary's. Going into the show, his victory was anything but a forgone conclusion, as Gheesling -- a graduate of Dearborn's Divine Child high school who earned his undergraduate and master's degrees from Michigan State University -- earned his way into the finals by stepping over many of the people who would be deciding his fate. But those jurors ultimately decided that Gheesling played the better game, and going strictly by the numbers, his dominance was undeniable.

After initially sandbagging competitions to appear weak in his houseguests' eyes, Gheesling turned up the heat on his game, winning three "Head of Household" contests -- more than any other competitor this season -- and two important "Power of Veto" competitions.

It wasn't always smooth sailing, however. Gheesling's devotion to his religion was called into question several times over the course of the show, once when house guest April Dowling called him a "disgrace" to Catholicism and another time when 75-year-old Jerry MacDonald told Gheesling, "you will always be Judas in my house."

But Gheesling, who earned a reputation as being a bit of aloud-talker in the "Big Brother" house, ultimately prevailed. He explained to the jury members, "I had to do whatever it took, whether it was shameful or not," and pleaded with them before they cast their votes, "Maybe you can set aside your emotions and vote to who you think played this game as a better player."

They did, and when Gheesling emerged victorious, he was greeted first by his girlfriend, Monica, and later by his mother, Sue, and his sister, Kelly. At Bailey's in Dearborn, about 100 friends and family of Gheesling -- who spoke fondly of Dearborn throughout his time on "Big Brother" and often wore his cardinal red Orchard Lake T-shirt in the house-- gathered to cheer him on.

Gheesling's father, Bob -- who said he has watched most of the seasons of "Big Brother" with hyson --was surprised he won the show so handily. "I thought it might have been 4-3, but never a shutout," he said. "He made several enemies in the house, and there was no way I thought he'd ever get their votes."

He said even though his son had to break a few promises and tell a few white lies in the "Big Brother" house, he's proud of the way he played the game.

Angie Romas, Gheesling's maternal grandmother, said she's never been much of a fan of "that reality stuff," but she got hooked watching her grandson on TV. She said she had a feeling Gheesling was going to be the winner.

"We all said, personality and feelings aside, if it goes by who played the game the best, it has to be Dan," she said. "I just hope this experience does not change him very much."

Gheesling is the first "Big Brother" winner to hail from Metro Detroit. In 2001, Pontiac's Nicole Schaffrich made it to the finals, but lost to "Big Brother" legend Will Kirby.

No word yet on Gheesling's future plans, but he's expected to return to the sidelines at Orchard Lake St. Mary's in the coming weeks. And it's likely that from now on, opposing teams will be a little more aware of the scheming going on from their opponents' sidelines.

Call him Dan the Man. Dan Gheesling, the 24-year-old but wise beyond his years Catholic high school teacher, handily won "Big Brother 10" Tuesday night by a score of 7-0.

After 71 days in literal captivity, Dan's cunning and ability to backstab and do it with charm and humor made him not just America's Player, but a favorite with his fellow houseguests as well.

Fans of the show predicted Dan would win, but all the show's observers (this one included) thought the vote would be a more modest 4-3 or 5-2.

The jury (comprised of April, Ollie, Keesha, Michelle, Jerry, Renny and Libras) all said in the final analysis, while Memphis -- the second place finisher with $50,000 -- played a good game, it was clear that Dan, the puppet master, out-played and out-smarted them all.

For his part, minutes after being awarded the grand prize, Dan told us he was in shock. "I didn't know I would win. I didn't think I would win. For sure, I knew I had two votes...Renny and Keesha. To be honest, Memphis and I talked about it the other night. I had no idea how it would go."

We also spoke to all the jury members post finale and they said, to a man and a woman, Dan gave more truthful answers when he was put on the spot and they thought Memphis was saying what, as Libra put it, "what people wanted to hear."

Michelle denied that Dan taking her on the luxury trip swayed her vote. And Jerry -- who said when placing his secret vote "this is for the person who always showed me kindness" -- read to viewers that Jerry was going to cast his vote for Memphis as the two bonded by the end after a few nasty fights.

But Jerry said, "Dan was the guy who said 'Goodnight, Jerry to me every night in the house." April, too, who early on was not a big Dan fan said, "When it came down to it, I never got to know Memphis. And the first few weeks in the house, Dan would ask about my family, and ask about me and my life."

Note to eventual "Big Brother" contestants: you can lie and cheat and backstab people but if you say "good morning" and "good night" to them and ask about the family and pets, it might make them forgive you in the long run.

Dan told us that his strategy going in was to emulate the "lie to your face and be honest about it" play of Dr. Will and Mike "Boogie", but he conceded "those guys made it look a lot easier than it is."

Up next for Dan and Memphis? Dan and Memphis are going on a road trip ("likely to Vegas") in the hot rod Memphis won with the girlfriends in tow.

Laughed Dan, "I hope the Renegade girlfriends get along as well as the Renegade Alliance did!" If not, we can see another show in the works.

Meanwhile, Keesha (who we all thought would make it to the final 2), proved to be an audience favorite. America voted and Keesha edged out Jerry to win $25,000 as Favorite Juror.

We spoke to all 13 houseguests and asked them a variety of questions: would they do it all again? Did Dan really deserve to win? Did they have any regrets? Who would they never talk to again? Did they know Jessie was in the gorilla suit? What would they take back if they could? Were those arguments as vicious as they looked on TV???

More importantly, this being "Big Brother"...Who could they never forgive?...Let's put it this way, April said stuff about Keesha she knows she should someday probably apologize for. And to hear Keesha tell it, "April, you can save that apology!"

For those and other provocative moments, check back for all our interviews posted Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.

"Big Brother Chatter"

We watched the finale in the green room with a bunch of former houseguests (and forgive me if I leave anyone out) including Evel Dick, Joe from season 8 (with lots of facial hair and who, rumor has it, is now straight), Marcellas (who is working for E, Geraldo, Tyra, Style and about 128 other shows at the moment), and most of the Season 9 group including Chelsia (still a crack-up), Joshuah (equally cracked), Sharon, Jen and Parker.

During the show, the green room (filled with friends of the show, the aforementioned former houseguests and friends and family of the current houseguests), cheered loudly when Libra said "it's called 'Big Brother'...not 'Best Friend') in response to the jury complaining that Dan and Memphis lied to them.

When Jerry asked "are we that gullible?" Evel Dick yelled out "Yes!" to thundering applause.

Dick and Chelsia signed autographs and then he had the idea to sign her butt. You had to be there. And he did. He told us what he wrote. We can't repeat it.

Inquiring minds wanna know. And being nosy, I had to ask Chelsia if she and Crazy James were still a couple. "Still best friends. And we will be for life," she says, "and I go out with him and his girlfriend all the time! She is a super girl, and perfect for him." (Sounds like ANOTHER TV show to me!)

The first-ever unanimous vote in Big Brother history gave high school teacher Dan Gheesling the win and $500,000. It’s also the first season in many years that a terrible human being did not win. Memphis Garrett won the $50,000 consolation prize even though he received zero votes.

Jerry may be a crazy bastard, but he pretty much summed up why Dan and Memphis made it to the final two. “Both of ‘em together was a force we couldn’t reckon with. We could have handled them one at a time; two of them, we couldn’t handle,” he said. Speaking of Jerry, when he joined the jury, he and Renny got into a screaming match, and Renny called him a “chauvanist pig.” Little do they know what a great pair they make.

After a “very close vote between the top two” jurors, Keesha won the fan favorite prize, perhaps as a reward for her stunning performance. Jerry actually came in second. What? Not Renny? What’s wrong with the people who watch this show?

The jury Q&A was full of the usual self-delusion on everyone’s part. “I hope you respected me because I respected you, Dan,” Jerry said, forgetting, apparently, the whole Judas thing. And Dan tried to argue that he pissed off people like April and Ollie so Memphis would think Dan had enemies in the jury house. That sounds like another one of Dan’s after-the-fact rationalizations, but hey, it worked.

I’m thrilled that a bigoted ass of some kind didn’t win this season, and that there seemed to be very little producer manipulation (unlike last summer, when they basically orchestrated Dick and Daniele’s victory)—even if some members of the over-enthusiastic studio audience were waving fake fan signs that the producers created and distributed.

This season was also far more entertaining than the boring spring season, but although it had its high moments—of comedy, strategy, and villainy—none of those were continuous, and thus it sort of lacked something, and not just a major twist (in fact, the lack of a twist was refreshing, as was the cast of actual strangers). Perhaps that’s just because I’m so used to hating nearly every person and aspect of the show, so I’m not quite sure what to do with a season that was both entertaining and low-key, at least when it’s compared to past seasons.

We have a winner for Big Brother 10: Dan! And it wasn't even close: he trounced Memphis, 7-0. (You can read Lynette's interview with the winner today on PopWatch.) But what other way could it have gone? After all, who could turn the little schmoozer down? While talking to the jury, he went on a charm offensive that never stopped. Even after the jury members cast their votes, he'd toss them a little extra bonus serving of friendship — "Portuguese Princess from Providence!" he chirped to Michelle after she'd turned her key — as if to say, "That one's for free! I love you that much!" If anyone hadn't initially voted for him, they might have turned back, ripped Memphis' key out and swapped it for Dan's, saying, "Aw, I can't vote against you, ya big crazy lug."

But let's begin at the beginning. On Sunday night, we were subjected to a clip show that was a rip-off of my least favorite staple from Survivor: the "farewell to our fallen comrades" parade of false camaraderie. But on Big Brother, instead of walking/paddling great distances and lighting effigies of the game's losers, Dan and Memphis just moved from room to room in the house, setting up old clips. Just how were they prompted to do this? Did Big Brother's voice boom over the loudspeaker: "Memphis, please reflect on Ollie and April mucking about on a bed in the 'Boom Boom Room.'" I was surprised the producers had the restraint not to ask Memphis to play a harp in the corner, all the better to score the fades from Dan's spoken memories into the appropriate clips as he scratches his chin and says, "Golly, I remember Jerry saying, 'Screw you people!' as if it was just yesterday..."

As usual with reality shows, the never-before-seen footage we were promised turned out to have been originally omitted for good reason. Amidst the greatest hits — Keesha's birthday party/neverending screaming match; Ollie and April's insufferable "I will live with you!" pool pillow talk — we got an extended remix of Brian's puppet show, Jerry scrubbing his dentures, and Renny doing impressions of everyone. The only worthwhile thing in this episode was that it made me reflect on how different my opinion of Renny is now versus what it was after the first week of shows. Watching the early clip of her quacking, "It's locked!" in the middle of the night, I remembered how she initially seemed like a garden-variety nut job who would be gone within weeks. But now, after weeks of seeing her low-key Diary Room statements, and other occasional mellow moments, I find her kind of endearing...just as long as she's not screaming about matching socks.

One last thing on the contrived clip show: I loved how at the end, the two guys stood up, proclaimed, "May the best Renegade win," and then walked in different directions as the show ended. It was meant to be a dramatic, pre-fight moment, like Ivan Drago telling Rocky, "I will break you." But in that movie, the two men went on to beat the crap out of each other. Here, Dan and Memphis turned around, walked away, and then found themselves alone on opposite ends of an incredibly dull house. It makes it a far less dramatic showdown when you picture Dan slinking back out of the bathroom area and saying, "So...uh...Memphis, wanna play Rummikub?"

But on to the main event: last night's star-studded finale, with an audience packed with such BB luminaries as Bunky, James, Adam, Matty, and Zach...who was there to compare notes with Jerry about what it's like to always have a room empty when you enter. The show began with the traditional squeezing of the sour grapes as the jury got together. Before they could even get to tearing Dan and Memphis apart, they warmed up by taking apart Jerry. It was like old times when he arrived in the midst of them mocking him, and we got another poorly edited intercut of insults. I don't mind that these yelling matches don't ever make any logical sense. I don't need to know the literal context of their argument; I just like the squabbly mood set by this general cacophony of grievances. It's like angry modern jazz.

When they got tired of arguing with Jerry, the jury moved on to discussing the Renegades. It went as it always does, with everyone passing hypocritical sanctimony around like a Wonderball. Jerry wondered who was the "worst of two evils," April (who was dressed like a dominatrix jockey) said that Dan's mind games were "heartless," and Renny said that he was "immature," and that Memphis was "the most insensitive person I've ever met in my life." Keesha was livid about Memphis but forgiving of Dan. And Ollie, of course, took all sides at once: He started off saying that Dan disrespected him, Michelle, and even Dan's own teammates, but then later said, "They played the game well....Dan lied and betrayed me, that's part of the game, I tip my hat to that." I remain amazed at his ability to simultaneously hold two contrary opinions. When he later entered the finale stage by doing a somersault, I expected him to then grab the mike and say, "Seriously, kids, tumbling is for losers."

Then came the grilling. Or, as Julie Chen dramatically said, "The jurors wanted answers. But could they handle..." — too-long pause — "...the truth?" I would just like to point out again that Julie is a newswoman at the network that brought us Walter Cronkite. That is all.

Dan and Memphis sat there, all gussied up in sport jackets. Where did these come from? Although I guess I can see why this event would be semi-formal. Sitting while Michelle operatically airs her grievances is like going to the symphony: You need to show respect for the artistic achievement. Dan was in full charm mode during the questioning, wearing his coy little smile and tossing in random compliments. When telling Libra that his best move was backdooring Michelle, he defended it by citing the fact that Michelle was a tough competitor, so he needed to take her out before she did the same to him. It's the inverse of the old strength-as-a-weakness job interview trick, where when you're asked what you're bad at, you say you work too hard. In BB, when asked how you mistreated people, you talk about how you only mistreated people who were just so darned awesome!

Memphis tried the same thing with Michelle, but she wasn't buying it. That's about how it went with everything for him: He could say the same exact thing as Dan did, but the jury members would simply roll their eyes at him, while winking at Dan and saying, "Oh, Dan, you little minx, you're trouble, you are!" At that point, it was clear Dan was going to walk away with this. He had an answer for everything that nullified all anger. When Ollie asked him why he swore on his girlfriend Monica and then broke his pact, Dan had a very strategic answer: He said he knew Ollie played with his heart, so if Dan pretended to do the same thing, Ollie would believe him. Ollie was convinced, mostly because it ratified his own opinion of himself as a sensitive lover. I'm not entirely convinced this was Dan's thought process at the time; he probably assumed Ollie would ask this question, and retrofitted his actions to this theory. But hell, who cares: It worked.

After the grilling finished, we shifted back to the live show, as Julie introduced the Jury and let them run through the audience's high-five gauntlet. They all seemed to get off on the attention, especially Renny, who curtsied and then slowly edged down the catwalk as if she'd just been crowned Miss America. She had a look on her face as if she were about to tear off her wig and toss it in the air like Mary Tyler Moore. Keesha, on the other hand, awkwardly tromped down the aisle as quickly as possible, looking very uncomfortable. (Yet another reason I found her an underrated personality in this house.) And finally, down came Jerry, who looked unable to bend down to receive the crowd. That is the true pain of aging: knowing that you can no longer exchange low high-fives the way you did as a younger man. And don't even get me started about the joint pain that makes asking friends to "pull my finger" a hazard.

The votes were cast, and everyone seemed to have calmed down a lot, and lost their anger at the finalists. The voting was led off by Libra, who made the bewildering comment "Contrary to popular belief, people think this game is real easy. I say, when everything else fails, just go crazy." It sounded like she'd accidentally mixed up her BB speech with an old note card she used to rally her sorority sisters at Spring Fling. (Magna cum f---ing laude, motherf---ers!) Renny, apparently concerned that she hadn't milked enough airtime with her entrance, decided to filibuster. I will now provide the text of her speech, annotated with what I think the producers of the live show were saying in the control room at the same time:

"As a businesswoman, this decision was very easy to make." That's it, Renny, just cast your vote and let's bring out Keesha. "In the game of life, and in the game of TV games..." Wait, what is she talking about? "...I think it's very important that people don't take for granted just the little things..." Is she casting a vote or giving a Sunday school sermon? Get her off!" "...a 'Thank you,' a 'Good morning,' a 'How are you.'" Julie, can you hear me? I need you to hit Renny in the head with a chair. A P.A. will be out momentarily to drag her back to her seat. "It is with great respect that in this game, I think it's good that you get in touch with a person's you-man spirit..." I'm going to run in there and strangle her myself with her own Mardi Gras beads! "...and on a you-man level, and I believe that way in life, and I believe this way in this game. So with this, that is why I'm voting for this person tonight!" Oh, my God, I think I blacked out. Is she done? Tell me she's done!

Before the votes were revealed, there was an interesting segment in which the four non-voting housemates voted out early were asked for their take on the show. They were the only ones who'd actually seen it, and thereby had an insider and outsider perspective. Brian, who so overplayed his hands at the beginning of this game, gave a wonderfully clearheaded wag of the finger to Michelle and April for their personal attacks against Libra and Keesha. The lesson was completely lost on Michelle, of course, as she spent the entire time mouthing disbelief and rolling her eyes. Even showing her the tapes won't teach her a lesson: I have a feeling that she has such a powerful defense system built up against her own faults that if you show her video evidence of her own ridiculousness, she'll abruptly succumb to temporary hysterical blindness.

Then, after a typically mushmouthed conversation with Jessie about how Dan, as America's Player, messed with him, the votes were read, and Dan won unanimously. As he celebrated, a woman in a black dress came skittering toward him and embraced him, and from the back I thought it was Julie Chen. Had his old-fashioned charms finally won her over? Would she yell, "From now on, you can call me Mrs. Dan!" But no, it was his girlfriend, Monica.

Then came time for the viewers' choice $25,000 prize to be awarded to their favorite jury member: Jerry came in second, which was odd. Considering how you readers have been trashing him on the message boards, I wonder if somewhere out there a Bizarro BB TV Watch exists, in which Jerry is regularly hailed as a hero. But the winner was Keesha, which I was happy with. What I like about Keesha is that she was clearly cast to fill the hot, flirty, ditzy-blonde slot, — but, barring her screechy laugh and cooing over her dog, she refused to play the part. She was smart (enough), sensible, and reasonable; even though she was angry at Memphis, she quickly thawed when he said that his evicting her was a game decision, and he was sorry it "might have ruined a friendship that I might not ever get back."

And speaking of things you can't get back, how about the 29 hours we all spent watching this show this summer? Dan was a great player, but it wasn't a fantastic season: The last four weeks were too predictable, with Dan dominating and steering the proceedings. But it won't make me abandon Big Brother next season: Unlike Dan, I'm no Judas.